Point Reyes National Seashore, embattled at 50http://www.hcn.org/wotr/point-reyes-national-seashore-embattled-at-50
The beautiful natural area remains embroiled in controversy over an oyster farm.We’re supposed to be celebrating here at Point Reyes, a foggy enclave along the Northern California coast about an hour’s drive and a world away from San Francisco.

Fifty years ago, President Kennedy signed the Point Reyes National Seashore into existence. For years, a national seashore had been little more than a pipe dream until Marin County supervisors agreed to turn the pristine dunes and beaches of this foggy peninsula into subdivisions and resorts. Locals saw what was coming -- a four-lane freeway along the bucolic coast -- and appealed to a higher power: Congress.

Thousands of grassroots activists and the nation’s leading environmental organizations took up the cause, eventually persuading a skeptical Congress to buy out the developers and ranching families at Point Reyes to create a new brand of national park -- one within reach of millions of urban Americans.

At the time, spending taxpayer dollars to buy private land for a national park was unheard of. Traditionally, national parks had been carved out of far-off public lands. But at Point Reyes, the government paid local ranchers and speculators millions for their land. As part of the deal, longtime dairy and cattle operations were grandfathered into the park and have thrived.

With the Point Reyes National Seashore secured, advocates turned to protecting the park’s ecologically important areas under the newly adopted 1964 Wilderness Act. In 1976, Congress agreed that some 33,000 roadless and still-wild acres be added to the federal wilderness system. Drakes Estero, considered the ecological heart of the park, would become the jewel of the crown -- the only marine wilderness on the West Coast.

Drakes Estero is home to one of the largest breeding colonies of harbor seals on the California coast. A dozen species of marine mammals live or migrate through the area. Endangered coho salmon and steelhead congregate in the Estero’s waters before running its tributaries to spawn. Birders have tallied more than 400 avian species here. Such remarkable diversity and abundance inspired the United Nations to name Drakes Estero part of the Golden Gate Biosphere Reserve.

The only thing standing in the way of full wilderness protection for Drakes Estero was Johnson’s Oyster Farm. The National Park Service had bought the ramshackle operation with plans to demolish it when a 40-year operating permit -- granted to the Johnsons when the park was established – expired. That would happen on Nov. 30, 2012.

There were seven years left on the Johnson’s permit when the Drakes Bay Oyster Company took over the operation from the family in 2005. Since then, the company has been cultivating not only shellfish, but also powerful friends. California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein took up their cause.

In 2009, California’s senior senator attached a rider to an appropriations bill to extend the oyster company’s lease. As a result, it is now up to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to decide whether to uphold the 1976 wilderness legislation or renew the oyster company’s permit. That decision is imminent. Many legal experts believe it could lead to a precedent affecting not only wilderness at Point Reyes but also the law on National Wilderness Preservation.

In the few years since the Drakes Bay Oyster Company has come to Drakes Estero, federal and state agencies have cited the company for dozens of violations ranging from illegally operating in areas of Estero reserved for wildlife; to polluting the beaches with thousands of plastic tubes it uses to grow its nonnative clams and oysters; to expanding without permits. The company has accrued more than $60,000 in fines. Just last month, on Oct. 24, the California Coastal Commission began enforcement proceedings.

Over decades, park supporters on both sides of the aisle have worked together when Point Reyes was threatened, turning back plans for freeways, marinas and urban sprawl. Support for the park remains strong. When the Park Service issued its Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the oyster operation in Drakes Estero, it received over 52,000 public comments, and 92 percent of those comments favored wilderness over oyster production. Conservation and wildlife organizations have formed a national coalition to uphold the wilderness legislation.

Stewart Udall, the Interior secretary who did all he could to secure the support of President Kennedy and Congress for a Point Reyes National Seashore 50 years ago, said, “Over the long haul of life on this planet it is the ecologists and not the bookkeepers of business that are the ultimate accountants.” We’ll soon know if Secretary Salazar agrees. That will be something to celebrate.

Susan Ives is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News(hcn.org). She served as vice president for the Trust for Public Land for 10 years and lives a short drive away from Point Reyes.

]]>No publisherGrowth & SustainabilityWriters on the Range2012/11/23 02:00:00 GMT-6ArticleElite club blocked from logging giant redwoodshttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/of-fat-cats-and-tall-trees
The Bohemian Club -- a Northern California retreat for the rich and powerful -- meets a legal roadblock that stops it from quietly logging old-growth redwoods.For now, at least, the chain saws are off-limits at the Bohemian Grove, the woody retreat of America's rich and powerful.

The Bohemian Club, an all-male bastion synonymous with wealth and influence, had big plans for its private enclave on the Russian River, 75 miles north of San Francisco. Too big, as it turns out.

Over the years, the Bohemian Club had quietly logged millions of board-feet of timber from its grove, home to endangered or threatened birds such as marbled murrelets and northern spotted owls, coho salmon, steelhead and rare stands of Coast redwoods and Douglas fir, some of them more than 1,000 years old. The land is well hidden from public view, and until recently, state regulators seemed to pay little attention to the club's forest practices.

That's changed. Recently, California environmentalists seeking to protect what's left of the old forest waged a David and Goliath-style battle against the Bohemians, and to everybody's surprise, they won.

The fight over the grove began in 2001, when John Hooper, a fourth-generation member of the Bohemian Club, hiked into one of the grove's stands of magnificent old trees and was surprised to find it tagged for harvest. As a boy, Hooper had visited the grove with his grandfather and uncles, and remembered the forest back then as including several stands of old trees. Almost all were gone.

Hooper then learned that the Bohemian Club had submitted a 100-year logging plan to the state to harvest up to 2 million board-feet per year at the grove, citing the need for fire prevention. In the run-up to filing its permit application, the Bohemian Club donated a few hundred of its acres to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, bringing the club's holdings to just under 2,500 acres -- coincidentally, the maximum size to qualify under California law for a "non-industrial timber management plan" that would require little oversight by state regulators. Hooper discovered that at least nine of the still-remaining stands of old growth had not been disclosed in the application. That -- and the accelerated cutting levels -- worried him. He went to the Bohemian Club's board with his concerns.

The 133-year-old Bohemian Club includes CEOs, bankers, industrialists, military contractors and high-ranking government officials. Its membership roster is secret, but reportedly includes every Republican president since Herbert Hoover, (with the rumored exception of W, whose membership bid is said to be pending). The billionaire Koch brothers, David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, the Bechtels and Clint Eastwood are among the more illustrious of the Bohemians, believed to number 2,300 members.

Membership costs $25,000 or more, in addition to annual dues, which entitle members to participate in well-shielded summer "encampments" at the Bohemian Grove. For two weeks every July, hundreds of private jets land at the tiny Charles Schultz Airport in Santa Rosa. From there, Bohemians are chauffeured to the grove where they indulge in elaborate costumed rituals and copious food and liquor, while cementing connections nonpareil amidst the ancient trees.

Hooper quickly learned it is "un-Bohemian" to question the club's policies. When he persisted, he was shunned by the club's management and soon by many fellow Bohemians. So he resigned and started a club of his own: "Save Bohemian Grove."

He and his fellow activists were soon joined by the Sierra Club, which provided an attorney.

California law subjects the timber-harvest plans to review and public comment. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, dubbed CALFIRE, received hundreds of public comments on the Bohemians' timber plan, the most it had ever received. Foresters and biologists from the Universities of California at Los Angeles and Davis also weighed in. They questioned the plan's fire-prevention rationale -- redwoods are famously fire-resistant -- and determined that the proposed harvest levels were not sustainable. Still, few were surprised when CALFIRE approved the logging permit.

Then on March 10, Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Rene Chouteau ruled that CALFIRE had violated state law in approving the plan and revoked the Bohemian Club's logging permit.

Environmentalists were both stunned and buoyed by the decision, which they say holds CALFIRE to the law and will require the Bohemians to come up with a new, presumably less damaging harvest plan. "This victory shows that no matter how influential a group may be, it is not exempt from the law," said Rick Coates, a veteran of many redwood battles.

The Bohemian Club downplayed the judge's ruling, asserting it was based on a "technicality." A spokesman said the Bohemian Club expects to resume logging the grove soon.

Susan Ives is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). She is a writer and communications consultant who lives in the shade of 100-foot redwoods in Mill Valley, California.

]]>No publisherCommunitiesWriters on the RangeEssays2011/04/01 04:55:00 GMT-6ArticleEven four-footed employees deserve to retirehttp://www.hcn.org/wotr/17364
Susan Ives tells the story of Edith Ann, a faithful horse
that narrowly escaped euthanasia when the Park Service decided she
was too old and gimpy to be of further use.

For at least two
decades, Edith Ann belonged to everyone, and to no one. Nobody
could agree how old she was, just that the little bay quarter horse
had lived at California’s Golden Gate National Recreation
Area for as long as anyone could remember.

Three
generations of park visitors knew Edith Ann, and many made a point
of coming by the corral to see her. The horse would stand patiently
as parents lifted their toddlers to touch her velvet nose. Even the
tough kids who arrived in yellow school buses beamed when she
accepted their warily outstretched carrots.

Those of us
on the volunteer horse patrol figured Edith Ann to be somewhere
around 25 -- about 75 in human years. Like the spunky little girl
in the giant rocking chair played by Lily Tomlin on Saturday Night
Live, our Edith Ann had attitude.

As part of my duties, I
mucked stalls, fed and watered and rode for the federal government.
On my assigned days at the barn, I brought Edith Ann her favorite
snack of raisins, brushed her until she gleamed, picked the gunk
out of her hooves and climbed on her back to head for the steep
trails. Our job was to intercept speeding mountain bikers, dog
walkers, wildflower rustlers and litterbugs. On one of those hills
last year, Edith suddenly stopped, as if to say, "I don't think I
can do this anymore." She limped back to the barn.

We
iced and rested Edith's sore leg for much of the summer, but her
limp worsened. By fall, we’d stopped riding her all together
and talked of putting her out to pasture. But where? The park had
no place to send its retired horses and no budget to feed one that
couldn't earn her keep. The ranger in charge said he would "keep us
advised." All the volunteers could do, it seemed, was worry. The
e-mail arrived a few weeks into the New Year. "The recommendation
is euthanasia."

But to my eyes, the mare, though clearly
footsore, was as spunky as ever, eating heartily and bossing the
geldings around the corral. In private hands, horses with
Edith’s Ann’s ailment, ringbone -- a kind of
osteoarthritis in the lower leg -- are commonly treated. The
problem was that Edith wasn't a pet. She was federal property. And
her career was over.

Hundreds of horses and mules work
for the National Park Service, mostly in the West. They carry tools
and supplies to backcountry work crews, pull cannons for battle
re-enactments, and break up unruly demonstrators. No one knows what
happens to most of the Park Service’s elderly equines, or
keeps track of how many are sold, slaughtered, or euthanized
because the agency has no further use for them.

A chosen
few, like Francis the mule, who for more than 20 years dragged
tourist barges up the capital’s C&O; Canal, are retired
ceremoniously. Hundreds of people attended Francis’ sendoff
to Jimmy Carter's boyhood home in Plains, Ga. It even aired on CNN.

But without a national policy or a place set aside for
them, what happens to the government’s elderly equines is for
each park to decide. Some rangers try to find adoptive homes for
their aging mounts and "trail buddies." But there is no requirement
that they do so. Of the more than 13 million acres of public land
in the national park system, not one is dedicated to retiring its
horses.

Animal lovers are a constant source of
consternation to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.
Surrounded by more than 7 million residents of the Bay Area, no
other national park is as much a part of the daily lives of so
many. Public hearings are well attended and frequently dominated by
those who argue their right to unleash their dogs or feed feral
cats. The night before Edith Ann’s scheduled euthanasia, park
superintendent Brian O'Neill received dozens of e-mails pleading
for Edith's life; he decided to commute her death sentence.

It took a few hundred dollars and a few months to get
Edith back on all fours, but this horse’s luck held: Upon
hearing of her plight, a horse sanctuary in Davis, Calif., offered
to take her in. When I visited Edith Ann last week, she jogged
across her corral, put her velvet nose in my hand and demanded
raisins.

Somewhere between 500 and 600 horses are owned
by the National Park Service -- working as long as they are able.
Like Edith Ann, they belong to everyone, and to no one.

Susan Ives is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a
service of High Country News (hcn.org). She writes in Mill Valley,
California, but no longer works with Park Service horses. “It
is humbling,” she notes, “to be fired from a volunteer
job that requires so much
shoveling.”]]>No publisherRecreationWriters on the RangeEssaysArticleEven four-footed employees deserve to retirehttp://www.hcn.org/issues/358/17353
Susan Ives tells the story of Edith Ann, a faithful horse
that narrowly escaped euthanasia when the Park Service decided she
was too old and gimpy to be of further use.For at least two decades, Edith Ann belonged to
everyone, and to no one. Nobody could agree how old she was, just
that the little bay quarter horse had lived at California's Golden
Gate National Recreation Area for as long as anyone could remember.

Three generations of park visitors knew Edith Ann, and
many made a point of coming by the corral to see her. The horse
would stand patiently as parents lifted their toddlers to touch her
velvet nose. Even the tough kids who arrived in yellow school buses
beamed when she accepted their warily outstretched carrots.

Those of us on the volunteer horse patrol figured Edith
Ann to be somewhere around 25 - about 75 in human years. Like the
spunky little girl in the giant rocking chair played by Lily Tomlin
on Saturday Night Live, our Edith Ann had
attitude.

As part of my duties, I mucked stalls, fed and
watered and rode for the federal government. On my assigned days at
the barn, I brought Edith Ann her favorite snack of raisins,
brushed her until she gleamed, picked the gunk out of her hooves
and climbed on her back to head for the steep trails. Our job was
to intercept speeding mountain bikers, dog walkers, wildflower
rustlers and litterbugs. On one of those hills last year, Edith
suddenly stopped, as if to say, "I don't think I can do this
anymore." She limped back to the barn.

We iced and rested
Edith's sore leg for much of the summer, but her limp worsened. By
fall, we'd stopped riding her altogether and talked of putting her
out to pasture. But where? The park had no place to send its
retired horses and no budget to feed one that couldn't earn her
keep. The ranger in charge said he would "keep us advised." All the
volunteers could do, it seemed, was worry. The e-mail arrived a few
weeks into the New Year: "The recommendation is euthanasia."

But to my eyes, the mare, though clearly footsore, was as
spunky as ever, eating heartily and bossing the geldings around the
corral. In private hands, horses with Edith's Ann's ailment,
ringbone - a kind of osteoarthritis in the lower leg - are commonly
treated. The problem was that Edith wasn't a pet. She was federal
property. And her career was over.

Hundreds of horses and
mules work for the National Park Service, mostly in the West. They
carry tools and supplies to backcountry work crews, pull cannons
for battle re-enactments, and break up unruly demonstrators. No one
knows what happens to most of the Park Service's elderly equines,
or keeps track of how many are sold, slaughtered, or euthanized
because the agency has no further use for them.

A chosen
few, like Francis the mule, who for more than 20 years dragged
tourist barges up the capital's C&O Canal, are retired
ceremoniously. Hundreds of people attended Francis' sendoff to
Jimmy Carter's boyhood home in Plains, Ga. It even aired on CNN.

But without a national policy or a place set aside for
them, what happens to the government's elderly equines is for each
park to decide. Some rangers try to find adoptive homes for their
aging mounts and "trail buddies." But there is no requirement that
they do so. Of the more than 13 million acres of public land in the
national park system, not one is dedicated to retiring its horses.

Animal lovers are a constant source of consternation to
the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Surrounded by more than 7
million residents of the Bay Area, no other national park is as
much a part of the daily lives of so many. Public hearings are well
attended and frequently dominated by those who argue their right to
unleash their dogs or feed feral cats. The night before Edith Ann's
scheduled euthanasia, Park Superintendent Brian O'Neill received
dozens of e-mails pleading for Edith's life; he decided to commute
her death sentence.

It took a few hundred dollars and a
few months to get Edith back on all fours, but this horse's luck
held: Upon hearing of her plight, a horse sanctuary in Davis,
Calif., offered to take her in. When I visited Edith Ann last week,
she jogged across her corral, put her velvet nose in my hand and
demanded raisins.

Somewhere between 500 and 600 horses
are owned by the National Park Service - working as long as they
are able. Like Edith Ann, they belong to everyone, and to no one.

Susan Ives writes in Mill Valley, California,
but no longer works with Park Service horses. "It is humbling," she
notes, "to be fired from a volunteer job that requires so much
shoveling."